February 4, 2004 - Wednesday
There is a guinea pig in Harry's Pre-K room named Spooky and when I walked in this afternoon Spooky was sitting on Harry's lap. [The picture here is actually from Feb 5 and courtesy of Aunt Sally, who came with grandma Shirley to pick Harry up.] It seems that Harry has taken a great liking to Spooky and is, much to my delight, very gentle with her. I'm especially proud of Harry because not all of the kids in his class are as careful.

On Monday when I was picking up Harry, Spooky was running around inside a wall of blocks that the children had built on the floor. While Harry and I were watching a couple of boys starting being silly and poking at her. It took serious self-restraint for me to do not more than tell the boys to stop and, had a teacher not been there to encourage other behavior, I could easily have physically moved them away from Spooky for such poor behavior. I did sit with Harry and made it quite clear to him how nasty I thought it was for them to be so cruel to animals.

But, Harry really already knows that. We've been very pro-active about teaching him the proper way to play with Paavo, our cat, and how earning an animal's trust can take a long time, especially if you've ever been mean to that animal. These days, Harry is very good with the cat and I couldn't be happier that the lessons have translated to this friendship with Spooky.


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